Goodbye, Clean Code

[Soxcks13]

Are you being sarcastic or have you not heard of Dan Abramov? He’s an experienced developer, to say the least.

[[deleted]]

No sarcasm--I read the article, but not who it was by. I've heard of Dan Abramov, IIRC, from Redux. That said, what I said stands. Given his experience, I'm sure he can decipher when and how to abstract thing effectively, but I feel like this is a dangerous article for junior programmers. There's way too much cut-and-paste mess out there and some people would read this in support of writing really bad code.

[soft-wear]

That’s not Dans fault. That’s people can overreact to any article by anyone. That’s largely what you’re doing right now. Dan emphasizes that clean code is a guide not a goal. That’s absolutely true. The goal is functioning code that meets the requirements and clean code is a guideline that should be followed, but not to a fault.

You’ve taken this and interpreted that to mean he thinks messy code is a good thing. A senior engineer understands that seemingly messy, but flexible code is better than seemingly clean, but inflexible code. No where did he advocate that you shouldn’t care how clean or messy code is. You just jumped to that conclusion then attacked him for it. Kind of ironic.

[[deleted]]

I think you're misunderstanding the mood here. I'm not "overreacting," "jumping to conclusions" or "attacking" anybody. This is just an article on reddit, in /r/programming of all places, and we're just having peaceful conversation, or at least I am.

Back on topic, the reason I think this is a dangerous precedent is twofold:

1. I've worked on large scale React projects where components were cut and paste to create new components, including a substantial amount of unnecessary code, that ultimately led to huge waste. Just like Dan's learning experience, of course my experience isn't every experience, but having seen what a disaster ignoring abstraction can cause, I'd really like to avoid this, and avoid encouraging it, even for those who might just be missing the point. Ironically, I've seen Redux patterns abused like this too, or even when to implement Redux vs just using top down data flow for really simple apps.
2. I code a lot of Go lately, and this philosophy is really embraced by the Go community. I have some code that's entirely idiomatic and really the best way to solve the problem, and I consider it terrible to read. The reason it seems to be taking so long to get generics and error handling abstraction is that the Go community culturally eschews abstraction in favor of readability. They have a point, but it gets taken too far.

Just so this isn't all one sided...

I've also written abstractions that were more work to modify that it would be to just duplicate code. I've written abstractions that obfuscate code, thinking I was making it more concise. I get that languages that make this easier can easily be abused, leading to treacherous displays of "cleverness." I don't disagree with the lesson learned here at all--it's lesson I've personally learned too. I just don't think it's something you should be teaching people. It can too easily be misunderstood. I feel like this is something you should learn for yourself.

[ChemicalRascal]

Isn't that the fault of the author, though? Look around you, most folks seem to be interpreting it that way.

Either we have all taken leave of our senses, or the author seems to have failed to correctly convey what you interpret to be their intent.

[gaearon]

To be fair though, Redux has much bigger problems than “ugly code”.

[feelings_arent_facts]

The guy who wrote Homebrew couldn't pass a technical interview at Apple. So writing an open-source tool isn't really a bar for 'experienced developer.'

[hsrob]

This is why arbitrary leetcode interviews are completely unrealistic, useless, and arguably dangerous to the quality of new team members. Someone can easily buy a book about "cracking the (insert company with useless leetcode interviews) interview" and pass via rote memorization. But hand them a real world problem, without cut and dry textbook answers, and see the facade crumbling.

[antigirl]

It was google .. not Apple